Half Marathon Training | Week 1 | Diary of an Injured Runner

Monday| Week 1 | Easy RunBack to it! I haven’t run a race for over 2 months and have only gone out once or twice since then due to the flu. Plan was do 1 mile, which led to 2 and then 3 so I exceeded my target but this easy run wasn’t easy! I struggled which is worrying as the half marathon is less than 11 weeks away. I just have to trust in my training though and know I’ll get there by race day.

Wednesday| Week 1 | Lamppost sprintsWarmed up by jogging for 1/4 mile and then went into lamppost sprints for just over a mile, finished with an easy paced run. I forgot how hard this was! Back last year I was running 8 minute miles and now I can’t get above 10.

Friday | Week 1 | Unintentional Rest Day
I had every intention of going out tonight and doing around 5 miles, however, I was sooooo hungry… then I sat on the sofa…… and I was so tired I had an accidental snooze. Quite annoyed with myself because I’ve lost one day now and I have a race Sunday so don’t really want to run the day before!

Saturday| Week 1 | Rest day

Sunday| Week 1 | Race Day ~ Longleat 10kWow what a race! Even though the hills were quite ridiculous, the rain soaked me right through and it was pretty chilly, this is perhaps up there with my top 3 races, I loved it! This is the furthest I’ve run since the Gloucester 10k in October and I’ll be honest I was dreading it. My training runs this week made me feel that I was back to square one, having not run for nearly 7 weeks really did take a toll on my fitness and I’ll be honest, I’m still not at 100% now… having the flu does suck. The first mile was super slow as you almost start up a hill, and it wasn’t nice getting to the top and seeing a sign for 5 miles knowing you had to go back up it again. I’d already resigned myself to the fact that I’d struggle today so I wasn’t overly concerned with my finish time. The last 1k or so is completely downhill, which is a welcome relief following all of those hills. A full race review will be up on Tuesday on the blog.

I had a couple of injuries. I can’t take my own advice and wore the wrong socks out on day 3 this week and ended up with a horrible blister on the back of my heel (my running shoes are not that comfortable but when you’ve paid so much for them it’s hard not to use them which I know isn’t logical). This meant that it was still sore there and I ended up with a nice blood filled shoe by the end of it, and because it was painful to run on it, I must have been doing compensating foot strikes because my foot was really sore after #facepalm.

Week 1 Total Miles: – 12

I’m looking forward to next week, I’ve got a couple of longer runs planned and I’m going to be working much more on speed. This week was more of an ease-me-back-into-running-after-being-sick plan.